The Coil Book Award annually recognizes an outstanding published book of merit from a press other than our own. The award gets its name from one of Nikola Tesla’s greatest inventions, the Tesla Coil, used to produce high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency alternating current electricity.

Our aim is to bring attention to an annual book that has incredible literary merit and appeals to a wider audience than it may have been able to reach, due to an ever-expanding, competitive market for indie presses. We want to help fantastic books reach the new and bigger audience they deserve, and reward presses with added promotion and support for releasing superior work. Presses, authors, publicists, and otherwise are welcome to submit their books for next year’s award. Self-published books, short story collections, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, chapbooks, digital-only, and books published in previous years are all considered. We accept galleys for books forthcoming in the next few months after submission, and there is no limitation to genre, length, subject, style, binding, or publication methods. We lean toward independent presses, but major presses are not excluded. We welcome LGBTQ+ and works from underrepresented groups, including people of color, Native Americans, and oppressed cultures, and we represent books of all types and highly encourage presses to submit their full catalogs.

In order to have your book submitted to The Coil Book Award, it must be submitted to the Coil Club for publicity consideration. We do occasionally consider other books submitted to our press for other purposes, but they are not given top consideration. The winner is selected by an external panel that reads and judges all the entrants, and chooses one book that shows outstanding merit, language, uniqueness, promise, and voice. Alternating Current selects the finalists to make sure all winning books fit aesthetic, talent, and appropriateness requirements to represent the Coil Club, but Alternating Current does not determine the final outcome for the judging; the external judges’ decisions are final. There is no separate application process or additional fee for this award; all submissions to the Coil Club are considered, and even books that don’t make it into our line of Coil Select Books are still considered for The Coil Award, judged under separate panel (and also receive other incentives that you can find in the chart shown here). We have the right not to select a winner in any given year if we don’t find that perfect book that captures our hearts.

The winning book gains entrance into our Coil Select Books collection, if it is not already a Coil Selection, and receives book promotion through Alternating Current Promotions, including publicity, book tours, reviews, book club giveaways and discussions, blog tours, and author spotlights. The winner receives a printed certificate, a cash honorarium and sponsored gifts valued up to $2,000 (varies with the annual sponsors), a listing on the Coil Book Award page and as a Coil Select Book on Alternating Current’s website, published author and book features on The Spark and through our partners, an engraved acrylic standing desk trophy, and our virtual wax seal medallion for personal and professional use on the author’s websites, blogs, and book covers.

• 5-stop book blog tour.
• One physical book signing/reading/launch event with full promotion.
• Giveaway and discussion in our book club.
• Professional press kit.
• Professional book club reading guide kit.
• An assigned publicist who seeks reviews & interviews.
• Listing on our website as a Coil Book Selection.
• Press release sent to all our partners, media, and mailing lists, with follow-up for potential promotion.
• Deep members-only discounts on non-exclusive publicity services, such as additional book blog tours, audiobook recording, book trailers, merchandising, editing and critiquing services, future submissions to the press, and more.
• Deep members-only discounts on exclusive publicity services for the selected book only, such as physical book tours.
• Social networking on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Goodreads, and Ello. Two to five posts per week for a year across multiple networks and accounts, without spamming.
• A book poster and additional social networking images to use for publicity.
• 10% off our entire Alternating Current Press backcatalog.
• Access to our private Members-Only section with discounts and resources.
• Access to our private members-only Twitter aggregator feed of the most comprehensive list of author resources, open submissions, agents, publishers, grants, contests, awards, residencies, et al., that we can find, updated daily.
• An interview on The Inductor.
• A Meet the Press spotlight on The Transmitter.
• A book review on The Volt.
• We follow you on your social networks, and retweet and share your successes.
• We work tirelessly to get your book reviewed and featured, to get you into bookstores, libraries, and universities as part of our ever-growing partner program, and to find contests and awards that suit your book.

The 2016 Coil Book Award winner will receive prizes of (The full prize is dependent on sponsors, and this section is updated as new prizes become available for the next award. Please help sponsor this award.):

• A cash honorarium up to $2,000. Current honorarium amount: $200.
• A printed certificate with our wax seal.
• An engraved acrylic standing desk trophy.
• Our virtual wax seal medallion for personal and professional use on the author’s websites, blogs, and book covers.